Gosh, the Pediatric Cardiologist's Is a Scary Place

This is one of those things I really couldn't talk about while it was happening. But I can now.

Zoey had a heart murmur at birth. That seemed to go away. But at her four-month well visit, it was back. And her pediatrician didn't just say, "No big deal," like apparently they do a lot of times with heart murmurs. She wanted Zoey to get checked by a specialist.

It was a month before we could get in to see the pediatric cardiologist. Which in a way was reassuring. Surely if it were something really bad, they would have seen her immediately, right? But on the other hand, we live in a small town and the specialist only comes over from Denver to see kids every so often, so maybe the wait was falsely reassuring.

Also reassuring was the fact our daughter was so healthy, happy, eating well, full of energy, wasn't turning blue when crying which I guess can happen with heart babies.

But still. A problem with your child's heart? Scary. And also, part of the legacy of my brother being killed...I know bad things can happen. I'm always steeling myself for bad things to happen.

My husband and I pretty much agreed not to talk about it...let's wait until we know what's going on before we get too worried and all that.

And I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself because for the month or so that we waited, I did a pretty good job of putting it all out of my head. Except when I was imagining in vivid detail us going to the heart appointment, her being admitted to the hospital with something that was going to kill her, me being brave and holding her in the hospital, keeping her from being scared while she died, how everything would fall apart afterwards...I mean, seriously, such an unlikely scenario, I know, logically, but how do you stop your brain from going there? Ugh. It was awful. But really, I just thought thoughts like that right after the four-month visit, and again right before the cardiology appointment; in between I did pretty well. And I didn't tell anyone but my mom, because I knew talking about it would make things harder for me.

Fast forward to last week, and the actual appointment. To the hospital, up to the specialty clinic with my husband and our daughter and our son. They had me undress Zoey and hooked her up to a bunch of machines (EKG, blood pressure cuff on each of her limbs one at a time, some big plastic thing they ace-bandaged to her foot.) Through it all she was so calm, like she knew something serious was going on.

And then they moved us to a different room and my husband and I sat there waiting for the doctor, it was all I could do not to cry and my husband said something along the lines of, "This place is incredibly nerve-wracking," and I said, "Yep. Terrifying." and then we didn't talk and just waited. The doctor told us later whenever he has a new nurse or whatever, he always tells them, "Every family that comes thought that door for the first time is scared," and gosh, so true in our case.

So finally the doctor came in, such a calm energy and he was wearing a tie with Tigger on it, he talked to us about how Zoey is generally, listened to Zoey's heart, saw the red raise birthmark on her leg and told us he wanted to do an ultrasound, especially with the birthmark because there could be some flow issues in her heart because of it.

So then to the room with the ultrasound machine, and Zoey held onto her Daddy's finger the whole time, calm and serious, while we looked at pictures of her heart that meant nothing to us and I tried not to think about the fact that everything might not be OK.

The doctor came into the room while the tech was in the middle of the ultrasound, muttered something under his breath that was vaguely reassuring, and then when the tech was done he sat and looked back through the images and finally turned to us.

"Excellent news," he said. "Her heart is completely normal, and what we're hearing is just a normal variation." Cannot even begin to tell you the relief that came with those words.

We left the clinic and sat on a bench outside the hospital for a long time, just to regroup.

And then we get on with our lives, right? Disaster averted. And although I know anything could happen to our children at any time, I try not to focus on that.

Seriously, with this heart thing--what a relief.

XOXO